"The Caitlin Clark Effect" strikes again

The House-passed Big Beautiful tax bill is a tremendous achievement and a giant spark plug for growth. The bill extends all the Trump tax cuts of 2017, thus heading off a $4 trillion tax INCREASE next year. It expands health savings accounts, includes expensing of major capital and research expenditures by businesses, allows more money for school choice and […]

It minimizes the crime of trampling on America’s sovereignty

Books book reviews Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi Is a Hardboiled Sensation A wholly original mix of fantasy, alternate history, and hardboiled detective noir. By Alex Brown | Published on June 17, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Harmattan Season, the latest novel from the incredibly talented Tochi Onyebuchi, is hard to describe. It’s a little of this, a little of that, a little all over the place in the best way. It blends hardboiled detective noir with fantasy with alternate history, and the resulting mix is something wholly original. Each year there are a handful of books that truly deserve to be called a “must-read,” and this, without a doubt, is one of them. Harmattan Season is set in our world, but it’s not an exact match. The French have colonized an unknown West African country, and the story begins a while after that in an unknown time but probably early 20th century. The trauma of a recent rebellion, brutally put down by the French, haunts the land. Boubacar, a “deux-fois” or biracial man who is both français (French) and dugulen (the Black people indigenous to the region), fought as part of the sorodassi, an imperial military force who suppressed the uprising. He fought alongside Moussa, a dugulen detective for the local policier (police) and the closest thing Bouba has to a friend. Despite promises of his sorodassi time opening economic and educational doors, Bouba is deeply in debt and scrounging work as a chercher (private investigator) for both the French and dugulen populations. As deux-fois, he can pass as white in the French Quarter, but when in the Ethnic Quarter everyone knows he’s Black. As the dry, dusty season known as Harmattan rolls over the city, the undercurrent of tension finally boils over. Bouba is wasting his life away at home when a bleeding woman collapses on his doorstep. Dying from a strange wound at her side, she begs him to hide her. He does, just in time for Moussa to drag him out of his apartment in search of the woman. When Bouba returns, she’s gone, and the cops have no idea where she is. He should forget her. He should move on with his life. And he might have, if not for discovering her the next day floating above a street, her blood hovering around her. The dead mystery woman is a Floater, a dugulen with an uncanny ability to float through the air.  Buy the Book Harmattan Season Tochi Onyebuchi Buy Book Harmattan Season Tochi Onyebuchi Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Boubacar’s quest to uncover the identity of the woman and the cause of her death leads him into the lavish estates, grimy warehouses, filthy back alleys, and crowded teahouses of his city. Everyone—dugulen, diéman (white people), and deux-fois alike—is trapped in the web of colonialism. Some are trying to extricate themselves and their people from it, while others are tightening the noose, out of fear or greed. The city teeters on the edge, but what happens when it topples over the edge is anyone’s guess. More dead dugulen turn up, each missing an organ. More inexplicable bombs drag whole chunks of the city into the air and disfigure those caught inside the maelstrom. More calls for revolution and reform countered by greased palms and threats of violence. At the center of it all is preternaturally unlucky Bouba. Hardboiled detective fiction from the mid-20th century is one of my favorite subgenres, but it’s a tricky one to get right. Much of it adheres close to its roots in pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s; think Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and more recently Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins. The world is gritty, volatile, and morally gray, the private dick is, well, kind of a dick, everyone betrays everyone else, and folks are going to die, probably several of them and in unpleasant ways. When thoughtfully crafted, the story holds a mirror up to the real world. Raymond Chandler is one of the best of the bunch and a personal favorite; he’s also the one who Harmattan Season is comped to, and if you’ve ever read any of his works, the comparison is obvious.  Not only does Onyebuchi use hardboiled detective tropes to explore deeper social themes (such as the consequences of colonialism) but he also plays with language in fascinating ways. Where some authors might mention a windy night, Chandler gifted readers with this bit of lushness: “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” Onyebuchi dives headfirst into Chandler-esque lurid description: “The moon’s a special kind of bright tonight. You wouldn’t know it’s Harmattan season. No trace of a dust haze. The dry in the air is the kind kind. Not the evil kind. Not the nosebleed kind. It’s good weather for the type of person who has trouble sleeping.” Layered, evocative prose isn’t new to Onyebuchi, but he puts his craft to work in Harmattan Season. The thing about hardboiled detective fiction is that you have to make a line like “It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in” sound convincing coming out of the mouth of a guy hired to do a job no one else wants. Onyebuchi pulls it off spectacularly with Boubacar. His flair for elaborate narration and his ability to shift his writing style to perfectly match the genre and characters blended with the pulpy, crunchy prose of hardboiled detective fiction make for the perfect literary storm. Above and beyond the story, I reveled in his word choice, the structure of his sentences and paragraphs, the cliffhangers and interruptions, the myriad non-English words the reader has to decode through context clues sprinkled throughout. From nuanced and unique characters to the vivid worldbuilding, from the complex themes and unforgiving plot, Tochi Onyebuchi’s Harmattan Season is already in the running for one of my favorite books of the year. Every book he writes blends genres, prose styles, and themes together in unexpected yet revelatory ways, and this is no exception. To put it simply, this book is sensational.[end-mark] Harmattan Season is published by Tor Books.Read chapters 1-13 The post <i>Harmattan Season</i> by Tochi Onyebuchi Is a Hardboiled Sensation appeared first on Reactor.

Vice President JD Vance defended the president amid criticism of his management on the current Iran-Israel conflict, hinting that the U.S. military might need to take “further action” against Iran. Vance’s statement comes as some members of the Make America Great Again movement, among them commentator Tucker Carlson, are criticizing President Donald Trump’s Iran policy. Carlson accused the administration of being “complicit” in Israel’s recent military actions against Iran, suggesting the situation could draw the U.S. into a broader war. The MAGA base’s fears of war in the Middle East were inflamed after Trump left the Group of Seven summit early to monitor the Middle East situation and urged residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital, to “immediately evacuate.” Trump penned two more Truth Social posts, one saying he knows “exactly where” Iran’s “so-called Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is “hiding” and another calling for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”  “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers,” the president wrote.  As a longtime critic of neoconservatism, Vance’s defense of Trump is likely to carry weight with those on the right critical of the American foreign policy establishment, which has been known to embroil the United States in what Vance has called “endless war.” Vance reiterated that Trump has been “amazingly consistent, over 10 years, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” “Over the last few months, he encouraged his foreign policy team to reach a deal with the Iranians to accomplish this goal,” the vice president said. “The president has made clear that Iran cannot have uranium enrichment. And he said repeatedly that this would happen one of two ways—the easy way or the ‘other’ way.” Iran had the option of maintaining civilian nuclear power without enrichment, but the country rejected that, erring in favor of enriching uranium far above the level necessary for any civilian purpose, Vance said. As a result, the International Atomic Energy Agency has found Iran in violation of its nonproliferation obligation. “It’s one thing to want civilian nuclear energy. It’s another thing to demand sophisticated enrichment capacity,” Vance said. “And it’s still another to cling to enrichment while simultaneously violating basic nonproliferation obligations and enriching right to the point of weapons-grade uranium.” The vice president said he has not seen good arguments for why Iran needed to enrich uranium at this level, or why Iran was justified in violating its nonproliferation obligations. “Meanwhile, the president has shown remarkable restraint in keeping our military’s focus on protecting our troops and protecting our citizens,” Vance said on X. “He may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment.” “That decision ultimately belongs to the president,” the vice president continued. “And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue.” Vance assured Americans that Trump is only interested in “using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals.” Shortly after Vance’s statement, Trump said that “we”—likely meaning the United States and Israel—have gained “total control of the skies over Iran.” The post Vance Defends Trump’s Iran Policy Amid MAGA Criticism of Foreign Entanglements appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As the riots in Los Angeles continue to rage and temperatures still flare from Thursday’s debacle when a U.S. senator forcibly entered a press event for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and began shouting at her, a nationally renowned free speech expert weighed in on the tense political atmosphere and the looming questions of the limits of free speech.   Legal scholar and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley is known for his unwavering defense of the First Amendment, allowing for restrictions on speech only in the case of “imminent danger,” when the violent conduct of the offender warrants censorship of the content.  In an interview with The Daily Signal, Turley noted that violent conduct is not the same as “hate speech,” which has more recently been censored extensively, particularly on college campuses. “Hate speech is protected,” he explained, “and it’s disconcerting to see many Democratic leaders repeatedly state that it is not.”  Turley was clear in his analysis of the violence of the LA riots: “Of course, people are allowed to wave the Mexican flag and to say most anything they want in Los Angeles about the immigration enforcement policy. What they’re not allowed to do is to violate the law.”  “That’s the line between conduct and content,” he explained. “Waving the Mexican flag is fine. Using it as a spear is not. … The people being arrested are being arrested for criminal conduct. You’re not allowed to destroy American property; you’re not allowed to assault federal personnel; you’re not allowed to violate city ordinances. There’s a very clear line between conduct and content.”  Tensions over the West Coast riots boiled over when Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., was handcuffed and forced out of a press briefing Noem was giving about arrests Immigration and Customs Enforcement was carrying out in LA Thursday. After bursting into the room, Padilla began shouting at Noem while resisting security officers who were attempting to hold him back from rushing the podium.  Several prominent members of the Democratic Party, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released statements on X following Padilla’s outburst, calling the actions of Noem’s security a “manhandling” and an “assault.”   Warren called for Noem’s resignation, posting a video on X in which she appeared somewhat emotional as she said, “What we’re really talking about here is a Trump administration that just wants to shut down the ordinary functions of government.”  I'm on my way to the Senate floor to talk about the assault on my colleague, Senator Alex Padilla.This is a horrifying moment in our nation’s history. pic.twitter.com/yi4SQIz7XL— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) June 12, 2025 Warren posted a video hours later, declaring, “Every day, Donald Trump is making this nation look more and more like a fascist state.”  In response to Padilla’s outburst, Turley posted on X, “The scene captured the race to the bottom by Democratic politicians in fueling the rage as violent protests unfolded around the country.”  Sen. Alex Padilla just disrupted the press conference with Secretary Noem. It was an extraordinary act by a sitting senator, but Gov. Newsom just supported Padilla in this disruptive act…— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 12, 2025 Turley told The Daily Signal, “Most of us watching the event live were astonished to hear this outburst in the middle of the secretary’s remarks, and then later to find out it was a U.S. senator. … Even as a U.S. senator, it does not give you a privilege to go to a press conference, start yelling at a Cabinet member, and disrupt a press conference.”  Turley condemned Padilla’s violence: “The problem is that these Democratic leaders lionizing Sen. Padilla are only legitimating the extreme conduct of many of their followers. They are suggesting that what Padilla did was commendable. It wasn’t commendable. He was trying to be disruptive. He was acting more as a troll than as a senator. And there was a time when few senators would have tolerated that conduct from a colleague.”  The post TURLEY: Questioning Free Speech Limits Amid Padilla-Noem Outburst, LA Riots   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., unintentionally explained why pro-lifers should support President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill. “Under the Republican bill, 200 Planned Parenthood centers would close,” Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, said at a pro-abortion press conference on Tuesday. “More than 90% of these closures would be in states where abortion is legal for the voters of the state.” In the budget reconciliation bill, the House GOP removed Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortions in the country. The effort had been supported by dozens of pro-life legislators from around the country. The move is a monumental win for pro-lifers because Planned Parenthood receives more than one-third of its overall funding from the U.S. government through grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. “You couldn’t think the Senate could do worse than the House when it came to Medicaid, but they sure did,” Schumer said. “It means Republicans are looking to rip away health care from millions more Americans.” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., echoed Schumer’s remarks. “There is not a day that ends in ‘y’ where Republicans are not trying to ban abortion here in Congress,” she said. “We are talking women left with no options for the care that they need. It doesn’t matter if you are a rape survivor or if you have a medical emergency, or if you simply don’t want to become a parent, whatever your reason, whatever state you are in, if Republicans get their way, abortion care will be a lot more expensive and a lot less accessible,” Murray said. “For some patients, it will seem basically impossible to get the care they need, regardless of how badly they need it.” The post Schumer Inadvertently Makes Pro-Life Case for Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., is reintroducing a bill this week to end the display of LGBT pride flags on federal property, The Daily Signal has learned. The Patriotism Not Pride Act, if enacted, would “prohibit certain federal activity with respect to the promotion of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Pride Month and the display of flags representing sexual orientation or gender identity on federal property or grounds.” Brecheen previously introduced the bill in 2023, but it did not receive a vote. “Our national flag is a symbol of the enduring principles that define our nation,” the Oklahoma Republican lawmaker told The Daily Signal in a statement. “When federal institutions display flags or use funding to promote destructive ideologies, it undermines the dignity of all Americans.” A bill with the same name was introduced in the Oklahoma House of Representatives in 2024 as well, which would similarly prohibit state agencies from displaying flags related to sexual activity or otherwise using state funds to promote LGBTQ Pride Month. Brecheen’s bill is in keeping with the general attitude of the White House toward Pride Month, as the Department of Education has instead designated June as “Title IX Month” to “honor women’s hard-earned civil rights and demonstrate the Trump Administration’s unwavering commitment to restoring them to the fullest extent of the law.” The Trump administration has also ended the display of pride flags at American embassies and at military facilities. “Symbols matter,” Brecheen said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “As our culture continues to decline in our country across all political lines, we chose to reintroduce this bill to reaffirm our commitment to truth, even when it is unpopular.” The post ‘Patriotism, Not Pride’: Oklahoma Lawmaker Aims to Ban LGBTQ Flags on Federal Property appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. X Corp., the company behind the social media platform X, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a New York law that mandates social media companies publicly disclose how they define and moderate politically sensitive content categories such as “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “extremism.” We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here. The company argues that the law amounts to government coercion and an unconstitutional intrusion into editorial freedom. The complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York, takes direct aim at Senate Bill S895B, legislation X says is not only invasive but also constructed with the explicit goal of compelling platforms to align with the State’s preferences on contentious speech. The provisions, X warns, are “an impermissible attempt by the State to inject itself into the content-moderation editorial process.” Key to the lawsuit is what X Corp. calls the “Content Category Report Provisions,” which force platforms to disclose whether, and how, they moderate categories of speech including “hate speech,” “disinformation,” and “foreign political interference.” Failure to comply could result in daily fines of up to $15,000 and potential lawsuits from the New York Attorney General, currently Letitia James. The company contends that the law is “facially and as-applied” unconstitutional and “violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 8, of the New York Constitution.” In the complaint, X Corp. argues that such disclosure mandates pressure platforms “to adopt, and regulate, these categories of content, even if X Corp. would prefer to categorize content differently.” The lawsuit echoes a successful First Amendment challenge X mounted against a similar California statute. In that case, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the law “likely compel[s] non-commercial speech and are subject to strict scrutiny, under which they do not survive.” It further warned that forcing platforms to “recast [their] content-moderation practices in language prescribed by the State” amounts to compelled speech. “The Content Category Report provisions compel every covered social media company to reveal its policy opinion about contentious issues, such as what constitutes hate speech or misinformation and whether to moderate such expression,” the Ninth Circuit decision stated. Adding to the controversy is the New York legislature’s reaction to X’s attempt to seek changes to the bill following the California ruling. Lawmakers refused to meet, citing the views of the platform’s owner. In a letter included in the lawsuit, the bill sponsors rejected talks with X because Elon Musk had, in their words, used the platform to promote content that “threatens the foundations of our democracy.” X  argues this statement reveals a viewpoint-based motive behind the law’s enactment, something courts have long held is unconstitutional. “The government cannot do indirectly what [it] is barred from doing directly,” the complaint says, quoting recent US Supreme Court precedent. By compelling speech on controversial matters, the law transforms private platforms into enforcers of the state’s ideology, the company asserts. “Many other categories of information… are far more difficult to reliably define, and assignment of their boundaries is often fraught with political bias,” the complaint notes, citing the legislative record behind the nearly identical California law. X is asking the court to declare the law unconstitutional, enjoin its enforcement, and award legal fees. “The First Amendment protects both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all,” the complaint emphasizes, invoking decades of settled free speech jurisprudence. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post X Sues New York Over Law Forcing Content “Moderation” Disclosure appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A federal judge in California has halted the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) Hub, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC). In a June 13 order, US District Judge Susan Illston declared that the planned elimination of the unit, part of a broader push by the administration to downsize the federal government, violates an earlier injunction. We obtained a copy of the order for you here. Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have prematurely celebrated the end of R-FIMI back in April when he said the censorship unit was “dead.” Despite his announcement, legal barriers remain in place, preserving the agency’s existence. For now. Through the intervention of the federal judiciary, R-FIMI, a program with a $50 million annual budget that has drawn fire for suppressing online speech under the pretense of combating “foreign disinformation,” has been granted an unexpected lifeline. The agency, a legacy of the Obama administration, was launched in 2016 to monitor and counter alleged foreign propaganda, particularly from Russia. But over time, its activities expanded into domestic spheres, drawing allegations that it pressured social media platforms to silence certain political voices ahead of the 2020 election. More: Inside the $1.5 Billion US Censorship-Industrial Complex: How MDM Grants Built a Domestic and Global Narrative Control Network Judge Illston’s ruling came in response to growing concerns from federal employee unions over sweeping executive actions they argue circumvent congressional oversight. The case, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, et al. v. Donald J. Trump, challenges President Trump’s February Executive Order 14210, which called for widespread agency reorganizations and staff reductions across multiple departments, including State. Illston previously issued a preliminary injunction on May 9 barring these cuts. In Friday’s order, she directly addressed the State Department’s attempt to move forward with plans to shutter R-FIMI, stating, “actions to be taken pursuant to the State Department’s reorganization plans…are prohibited by the Court’s injunctive relief, as are all final separations scheduled in the State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference program.” She added a pointed directive: “If the State Department has any question about whether planned actions fall within the scope of the Court’s injunction, the Court ORDERS the Department to first raise those questions with the Court before taking action.” Rubio’s attempt to sidestep the court’s prior ruling and sunset the R-FIMI unit has now been frozen, part of the ongoing legal tug-of-war over executive authority and the role of the judiciary in restraining or enabling bureaucratic overhaul. For now, R-FIMI’s future remains entangled in litigation, and its controversial role in shaping public discourse continues unabated. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post California Judge Blocks Trump Admin from Dismantling State Dept’s Censorship Agencies appeared first on Reclaim The Net.